Dancing on Knives, Page 3

  He laughed as he spoke, but Bridget had pressed her lips together and looked away.

  Consuelo Sanchez was indeed a redoubtable woman.

  Her mother, Sofia, had been a Catalan aristocrat, Augusto told his children many times. She had been educated in France and Switzerland, dressed by Parisian couturiers, taught to dance by an Italian count. On holiday on the Costa del Sol she had fallen in love with an Andalusian gypsy playing guitar in a backstreet restaurant with a troupe of flamenco singers and dancers.

  Enrique Sanchez had been a charming, handsome, dissolute man with a deep voice full of pathos and an ancestry filled with pirates, horse-thieves, mercenaries and courtesans. His father, Mauricio, had been raised in a cave with a dirt floor, a tin chimney, a black pig and six chickens, and had made his money whenever he could, wherever he could, though principally with the vibrato of his voice, the snap and strum of his fingers, the click of his heels.

  His mother, Madelina, had grown up in the servant quarters of Zarzuela Palace in Madrid, the daughter of the palace chef. Her family had been in the employ of the royal family since the time of mad Isabel II, who had scandalised the arrogant aristocracy of Madrid with her string of lovers, her extravagance and her violent temper. Eventually she had had to abdicate the throne and flee Spain, but Madelina’s family had simply waited until her son, Alfonso XII, won back the throne and then began cooking for him.

  By the time Madelina was born, Alfonso XII was dead and his son, born posthumously, was the king. According to family mythology, the child-king and the daughter of the cook grew up together, playing hide-and-seek in the gardens and floating paper boats on the palace fountains. Sara had always thought privately that this was probably an imaginative embellishment. For by the time Sofia the Catalan aristocrat fell in love with the handsome guitar player Enrique, his mother Madelina was running a restaurant in Cádiz and no-one seemed to know how she had got from being the playmate of the king in Zarzuela Palace to being married to a flamenco dancer who had grown up in a cave.

  Embellishments and exaggerations aside, Sara had always adored listening to the stories of Augusto’s ancestry, for they were filled with romance, adventure, music, dancing and danger. She loved hearing how Sofia had fallen in love with Enrique at first sight and had run away from home to marry him, giving up all her wealth and consequence, all her jewels and Parisian dresses, to work in her mother-in-law’s restaurant. By all accounts they had been happy as larks, raising seven laughing children who all inherited their father’s deep, rich voice and their mother’s high-boned aristocratic features and blue-green eyes. Eyes that Pablo, Sara and Teresa had all in turn inherited from their father.

  Sara’s grandmother, Consuelo, had been the seventh child of a seventh child, which according to folklore endowed her with the gift of being able to see the future. She had grown up in that restaurant in Cádiz, stealing almonds and figs from the table as her grandmother made tocino de cielo, the rich caramel custard which rather oddly translates as ‘bacon of the heavens’, helping her mother chop onion and capsicum to make gazpacho, and being allowed to break the eggs for the huevos a la flamenco, an old gypsy dish that was one of the restaurant’s specialties.

  She learnt the recipes her grandmother’s grandmother had cooked for mad Isabel II, made with partridge, duck, quince, pomegranates, the testicles of toros slain in the corridas, and other rare ingredients. She learnt to make the rich, fiery soups and tortillas of the gypsies, the olla gitana which was their primary sustenance and made with whatever meat, vegetables and fruit that were to hand. From her mother, she learnt the traditional dishes of Catalonia, the sofrito, picada, alioli, samfaina and romesco that Catalan chefs have perfected over centuries.

  From her father’s family Consuelo also learnt to dance flamenco and to tell fortunes. According to family myth, she foretold the coming of General Francisco Franco, who launched his revolution against Madelina’s old playmate, Alfonso XIII, in 1936.

  The streets will run with blood, she said. And they did.

  Forewarned by Consuelo, the family managed to flee Cádiz which was the first city to fall to Franco. With trunks and furniture piled high in farm trucks and one elegant open car with wide running boards and headlamps like surprised eyes, they left Cádiz three days before the coup d’état. There was Consuelo’s grandmother, Madelina, Enrique and Sofia, plus five of Enrique and Sofia’s seven children, Félicité, Juan Joseph, Ramirez, Evangelique and Consuelo, who was then just twenty-two. With them went Consuelo’s husband of three weeks, her cousin Placido Enrique Augusto Sanchez, and though she did not yet know it, a tiny embryo coiled deep within Consuelo’s womb.

  They went to Barcelona, to Sofia’s family, who rather reluctantly helped them all find homes and work, much of it on their own estates. Madelina opened up another restaurant where Enrique and the boys played their guitars, and the girls danced and sang and cooked, just as they had always done.

  There was little money to be made from singing and dancing in those days, though. For the next three years the most terrible, bitter, bloody civil war imaginable was waged. Half a million Spaniards died, including Enrique, Sofia, Félicité, Juan Joseph, Ramirez, Evangelique, and Placido Enrique Augusto Sanchez.

  Not all were murdered. Sofia died of a combination of starvation and dysentery, Evangelique died from a fever contracted after giving birth to a little stillborn girl, Florenza, who was buried with her, and Placido died in Barcelona’s last desperate attempt to keep out Franco. The city fell in January 1939, one of the last to fall. By the time Franco’s soldiers were marching down the Ramblas, Consuelo, her grandmother and her three-year-old daughter, Juanita, were among the thousands of refugees fleeing through the Pyrenees into France. It was winter and the mountain paths were deep with snow, the towering peaks wreathed in mist. Many of the refugees were barefoot and scantily clothed. Consuelo herself was six months pregnant. She had only what she could carry on her back – some bread, a bag of garbanzos, her shawl, her iron stew-pot, a knife, her beloved recipe book and her tarot cards, wrapped together in a length of silk cut from her wedding dress.

  The three women – the grandmother, the young pregnant mother and the child – went through the Pass of Roncesvalles, the same pass that Charlemagne had fled through more than a thousand years earlier with the Saracens snarling at his heels. It was there that the legendary warrior Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew, raised his magical horn Oliphant and called desperately for help as the rearguard he led was ambushed by the Basques.

  ‘He blew his horn so hard blood gushed from his nostrils. Three times he blew, and the sound of his horn was so deafening the trees shook as if in a gale and the birds of the air fell dead about him,’ Consuelo would say. ‘But it was too late. By the time Charlemagne came charging to his rescue, Roland was dead, his sword Durendal stained to the hilt with blood, and dead too were all his men.

  ‘I also stained my blade with blood, coming through the Pass of Roncesvalles. That means the Valley of Thorns, you know, and indeed it was a cruel, cold, thorny way. My only consolation is that it was not Spanish blood I drew, but French, and we all would have died if I had not killed him. The Dutch say, when something is easy, that it takes as much effort as casting a Frenchman into hell. Well, I won’t say it was an easy thing to do, killing that bastardo, but he sure as hell went to hell, that I know.’

  She was unable to save Madelina, who died the night before they crossed the border into France, as if she could not bear to leave Spanish soil. Augusto was born that same night, a posthumous child, like his deposed king. If Consuelo had been able to walk just a few more steps, he would have been born in France but even then his will was strong, Augusto said, and he demanded he be born in the country of his forefathers.

  Consuelo laughed at this interjection and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Quizás, no quizás. All I know is that I didn’t have the heart to walk anymore that night. Though certainly you had a will to live, mis hijo. You were about the size of a fish and as blue.
I never thought you’d live. Juanita had to cut the cord, although she was not much older than little Sara here, and we scrubbed you all over with snow, and wrapped you up in my shawl and then we went on. I prayed for you every step I took. Maybe it was because we were walking the old pilgrims’ way, but God heard my prayers and spared you. I think he knew I could not bear to lose anyone else.

  ‘I was sick, though, and hot, so hot I wanted to tear off all my clothes and lie down in the snow. I kept seeing strange things – angels and ghosts, people I knew were dead. My poor Juanita was so frightened. She ran to find help. An old shepherd took me in. Apparently I punched him in the eye. I don’t remember doing it. When I woke three days had gone by. He’d kept Augusto alive by feeding him ewe’s milk. It was from that old shepherd that I got my recipe for patatas a la riojana. It was all we ate when we were there. I would not eat it at first, it was so red, like blood, and it made me weep it was so hot. All the food in Navarre is red – it’s all the roasted bell peppers and chilli they use. It’s because so many of the adventurers who explored the New World were from Navarre, did you know that? Even though they are so far from the sea. So many good things they found in the New World – chillis, bell peppers, potatoes, chocolate – all brought back by those Navarre sailors.’

  That was how Consuelo told her stories, the past and the present, myth and memory, all muddled up so no story was ever told in quite the same way. In the months after she came to live with Pablo and Sara she told them many, many stories. If either of the children woke at night it was Consuelo who came and soothed them with her deep, sad voice, which never failed to rock them back into sleep. ‘Far out at sea the water is as blue as the bluest cornflower and as clear as the clearest crystal, but it is very deep, so deep that if a hundred steeples were piled on top of each other they would not break the surface of the water. It is down there that La Sirenita lived …’

  It was Consuelo who made them churros for breakfast, brazo de gitano for afternoon tea and zarzuela de mariscos for dinner. She packed up cold tortilla for Pablo to take to school for lunch, though he begged for vegemite sandwiches like the other children, and went to pick him up after kindy, dressed as always in black from head to toe and looking as much a demented widow as Queen Victoria ever did.

  Their grandmother was a very small woman, with coarse, dark, greasy hair streaked with grey that she always wore in a low bun, and sea-green eyes that were extraordinarily vivid against her swarthy skin. She peppered her speech with Spanish words and phrases that meant nothing to the children, so they were never quite sure what she was saying to them.

  Her stories were filled with terror and cruelty that mesmerised the children and gave them nightmares. She told them how El Cid was murdered on his wedding day by a Saracen spy and how his wife of only a few hours tied his corpse to his horse and whipped it so it galloped towards the enemy who shot arrow after arrow into it, then fled at last in terror, thinking El Cid a demon that could not be killed. Her fairy stories were filled with gruesome details not always found in the children’s picture books – red-hot shoes the evil stepmother must dance in till she dies, the cutting out of the little mermaid’s tongue, the queen asking the huntsman to bring her a bottle of Snow White’s blood stoppered with her big toe. Consuelo was drawn to the more tragic songs and tales, perhaps because she could no longer believe in happy ever after.

  ‘Too many bloody women in this place,’ Augusto complained. ‘Nag, nag, nag, that’s all I get.’

  ‘If you spent a little more time at home with your wife and children and less time out on the town around with all your artist friends, I would not be nagging you,’ Consuelo snapped back.

  ‘I’m not out on the town, I’m working!’ Augusto shouted.

  ‘Till three in the morning?’

  ‘Sometimes, if that’s when inspiration strikes me.’

  ‘Hmmph, is that what her name is?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Mama!’ Augusto flung up his arms and banged out of the apartment. Sara heard the roar of his beat-up old motorcycle as he accelerated up the hill and away again. Bridget went back to bed, trying to hide her tears. Consuelo banged pans together and muttered to herself in Spanish.

  The new apartment was certainly so cramped there was no room for Augusto to paint. It was a dingy old place, and from their window, they could see nothing but a parking lot and another apartment building. It was near Manly Hospital, Manly Public School and the shops, though, and on sunny days the light had that pellucid brightness only found near the sea. For at the end of their street was the harbour and three blocks to the east, past shops and pubs and the mall, was the ocean, stretching to infinity.

  Bridget hated it. She hated the noise of the pub on the corner, the hot blast of greasy-smelling air that wafted up from the fish and chip shop, the dogs that urinated on their front step, the grimy old men who sometimes rummaged through the garbage bin in the park by the harbour. She especially hated their flat, which was too small, too dark and too hot.

  Sometimes Bridget cast an accusing glance at Sara when she complained of the apartment. Sara always felt bad, for she knew it was all her fault. If it was not for her, Augusto would have rented a suite of rooms in a grand old mansion on the south hill of Manly which had magnificent views of the ocean and of St Patrick’s College, standing proud and graceful in its wide green park.

  The suite had been the entire upstairs floor of the mansion, with high ceilings, polished floorboards, a new bathroom, and an enormous, tastefully renovated kitchen. There were three large bedrooms and a big loft that Augusto could have used as a studio. It really could not have been more perfect.

  Bridget had been enraptured with the suite and unable to believe the rent was so cheap. The woman showing them round told them it was because the house was the property of the church and on a ninety-year lease.

  ‘Look at that view!’ Bridget had wheezed, short of breath after heaving her cumbersome body up the stairs. She had only just been released from hospital and was still very bloated. She had leant against the iron-lace of the balcony rail and looked about her with shining eyes. ‘You can see all the way up the Central Coast. Oh, it’s wonderful!’

  ‘Light’s good,’ Augusto said. ‘I’ll be able to paint here.’

  ‘And walk to the beach,’ Bridget said, her face glowing. ‘Oh, Gus, I love it! It’s so spacious and bright. Everything else we’ve seen has been so dark and poky.’

  Sara and Pablo were running wildly in and out of the rooms, hiding in cupboards and jumping out to scare their parents. They came to the master bedroom, a large room at the far end of the building with big windows looking east across the sea. The room was completely bare of any furniture. Pablo had run in quite happily but Sara screamed as soon as she entered the room. She crouched against the wall, hiding her face with her hands.

  ‘What’s wrong, princess?’ Augusto asked.

  ‘Have you hurt yourself?’ Bridget asked, trying to bend down and see.

  Sara shook her head, shaken with sobs. Her parents, at first concerned, began to get exasperated. Sara pointed a shaking hand at one corner of the room. ‘Bad man,’ she said. ‘I frightened. Bad man there!’

  ‘There’s no-one there,’ Bridget said crossly. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Bad man!’ Sara screamed. ‘I frightened!’

  She could not be calmed. Augusto went down on his knees and tried to comfort her, but she would not stop crying until he picked her up and carried her out of the room.

  The landlady shook her head, marvelling. ‘Fancy that now,’ she said. ‘They say that about children and animals, don’t they? It’s downright uncanny.’

  ‘What is?’ Augusto asked, petting Sara’s back as she buried her head in his shoulder, her sobs beginning to subside.

  ‘Oh, the man who used to live here hung himself in that room. It was just awful! We hadn’t seen him for a while and then there was this smell … eventually my husband came up to knock on the door, to make sure everything was
all right. When we couldn’t get an answer … well, we unlocked the door in the end and found him, hanging there. I’ll never forget it. He’d been dead a while, and what with the heat and all …’

  Bridget had recoiled, her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘We don’t really like to tell people, it turns them off the property and no wonder. Not that we didn’t give the place a decent clean.’

  Bridget was ashen. ‘How horrible!’

  ‘It was rather. It was a while ago now, but I don’t like to think of it much. He’d lost his son in Vietnam and then his wife left him, and he got so depressed he lost his job. Sad really. I wish he’d done it some other place else, though. We’ve had such trouble renting out the rooms, ’cause once people find out they feel uncomfortable.’ The landlady sighed. ‘I guess this means you won’t be taking the place?’

  Augusto looked down at Sara, still clinging to him and giving the occasional convulsive sob, and then at Bridget who looked rather sick. ‘I guess not,’ he answered.

  When they had told Consuelo about it later that evening, she had sighed and nodded her head. ‘Poor child,’ she said, stroking Sara’s glossy dark hair. ‘She has the gift. Though sometimes it is more of a curse than a gift. I know.’

  Consuelo had seemed to take more interest in Sara then. She got out her treasured pack of tarot cards for the little girl and told her the stories behind the beautiful, magical pictures. She made her torrijas for afternoon tea, even though Bridget protested that all Sara’s teeth would fall out, and sat by her bed and sang her the cante jondo of the gypsies till Sara drifted off to sleep.

  Since Bridget was now spending most of her time in bed, only getting up to shuffle to the bathroom or to rummage for something else to eat, Pablo was at school all day and Augusto was hardly ever home, it was her grandmother with whom Sara spent all her time. Every day they walked hand-in-hand to the beach, searched for shells and feathers, paddled in the water, sang songs and told stories, then came home for an early lunch and Sara’s nap. When she woke up, she would sit at the table and draw while Consuelo folded the washing, and then she would help make dinner, proud to be allowed to roll the eggy meat up into little balls for albóndigas or chop up the vegetables for samfaina.